Many systems rely upon an audible signal to communicate with people. Examples are smoke/fire alarms and home security devices, telephones, doorbells, and the like. For deaf or hard of hearing persons, however, the aural realm of the senses is impaired and alternative senses must be engaged in order to adequately receive the warning or message. Further, even those having normal hearing may be distracted or otherwise occupied, or have their hearing impaired by, for example, the wearing of headphones, and miss the normal audible signal.
Ways to signal deaf or hearing-impaired persons include augmenting an audible signal, see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,777,474, or providing a corresponding visually perceptible signal in lieu of the audible message. However, systems that provide both audible and visually perceptible messages are preferred, particularly since households and workplaces frequently have normal hearing persons present also. Nonetheless, conventional devices are unable to generate both distinctive sounds and distinctive visually perceptible signals to alert individuals of more than one potential event. Indeed, current devices are unable to distinguish visually the multitude of audible alert signals present in a given situation, and are frequently limited to the simple action of turning on a particular light source to alert an individual of an audible event such as a phone call. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,054,994, describing a signaling system automatically turning on a reading lamp in response to an audible signal.
Thus, despite the various advances in combining a visually perceptible message with an audible one, conventional devices are inadequate to allow deaf or hearing-impaired individuals to distinguish between various acoustic events within the home or workplace. These advances, however, come to full fruition in the device of the present invention, which provides individuals with visual signals enabling discrimination between various events.